So What Happens Next?
by the Ambassador
Summary: Yevon is dead, Auron's been sent, Tidus has ceased to exist. SO WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?-Our favourite posse are out of the spiral and discovering their heritage...which is a lot weirder than any of them ever even *dreamed*.


A/N: Yep, the Ambassador is back and crazier than ever. She still doesn't own Final Fantasy...she still is obsessed with Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy and Discworld...she still is accompanied by the GF-Muses Squall, Rinoa, and Cait Alexanderskin(and now the demonic crow Dante).  
  
This fic is dedicated to AtheneMiranda, to the Bad Penny, Landslide, Venus Fly-Trap, Coronation, and Summoner's Mobs, to the memory of Douglas Adams, and to all the people who ever asked...  
  
_________________________  
  
So What Happens Next?  
  
_________________________  
  
'Reality is an illusion, albeit a   
  
very persistent one.  
  
-Albert Einstein  
  
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Prologue-Breaking the Surface  
  
_________________________  
  
Water...  
  
A few blue-green pyreflies danced around the still body. Eyes flicked open, blinked.  
  
Light...  
  
The liquid he was floating in was cloudy-grey, a far cry from the crystal blue waters he remembered. There seemed to be no end to the expanse-all was grey water, as far as the eye could see.  
  
~Is this the afterlife?~  
  
A light, blazing yellow above him. He uncurled from his foetal position and swam towards it.  
  
Surface!  
  
He could see it now, the shimmer like light on a battered silver plate. Struck out impatiently, felt cool air on his face-  
  
-and an image burned itself into his eyes, blue and pink and crimson; a girl with flowing sleeves dancing on a pillar of water, a rising snake's-head shape, stylised representations of pyreflies. He started in surprise-was that Yuna, dancing a Sending as she had in Kilika?  
  
  
  
Black lettering woven with the image-  
  
A triumphant chord sounded-  
  
and then, darkness.  
  
***  
  
"Hello?" someone called nervously.  
  
"Who is it?"  
  
"Izzat you?"  
  
"Who is 'you'?"  
  
"*Lulu*? What are you doing on the Farplane?"  
  
"This is the afterlife? Wait, was that Sir Auron?"  
  
"Don't ask me! I don't believe in that stuff!"  
  
"Does this mean Kimahri dead?"  
  
"You're all STANDING on me!"  
  
"TIDUS! WHAT THE HELL-"  
  
-and with that, the light came on.  
  
The dark-haired man with both a goatee and a harassed look upon his face sighed as he slipped behind the desk. "I'm sorry about this, we weren't expecting you so soon and no-one's found out how to stop the power cuts whenever new recruits arrive..."  
  
The small and recently reunited group of an ex-summoner, a blitzer, a black mage, a Ronso, an unsent warrior monk, an Al Bhed and a boy who was not real stared blankly at him. Well, most of them stared at him. The boy who wasn't real just wriggled his way out from under the rest of them and tried to breathe.  
  
They were in a smallish room, the walls and floor painted white. The only items of furniture in it were a large desk, which the goateed man was sitting behind, and a chair, which he was sitting in. On the desk was a large sign marked ARRIVALS, and a great deal of generic paperwork. Behind the man was the only door out of the room. Someone had drawn a smiley face on it. A foot-high smiley face. In strawberry jam.  
  
The goateed man followed their collective gaze and sighed. "That damn cat, honestly I don't know why we keep him around...right. Welcome to Medui-Omar. Don't be too surprised at any insanity you may see, it's as contagious as measles round here and I only ask that you don't blow anything major up, offensive spellcasting is forbidden as is the use of lethal weapons against fellow inmates, we're all pretty much making it up as we go along and half the time we don't know what the canon is so it can get interesting, the fanfiction authors won't go away no matter how much you attack them, there's some mythical creature called 'sensibility' only no-one's ever even seen it's footprints, I'll expect you to leave the weirdos in room 46 alone and hopefully they'll do the same to you, we're all one big family here and once you've been through a few domestic disputes I guarantee you'll see the resemblance, and finally if there's anything you'd like to add to The List I'd appreciate it if you said so now." He produced from the mounds of paperwork on his desk a sheet of paper reading;  
  
*DON'T TALK ABOUT*  
  
  
  
apocalypses  
  
  
  
airship accidents  
  
portraits  
  
Cait Sith  
  
dead women  
  
  
  
memory loss  
  
demons and vampires  
  
all sorts of robots  
  
Cait Sith  
  
time travel  
  
more memory loss  
  
Eddy's in the space-time continuinuinuinuum  
  
Cait Sith  
  
lab experiments  
  
shortened lifespans  
  
messing with souls  
  
dysfunctional families  
  
Cait Sith  
  
Lulu looked guiltily at her current voodoo doll, a Wicked Cait Sith, and tried to hide it behind her back. The goateed man drummed his fingers on the desk, his expression of harassment now overlaid with an expression of impatience.  
  
"Um..." Yuna managed at last, completely at sea. "Er..."  
  
"We're all really, really..." Tidus offered, and then fell silent.  
  
"Isn't there *anything* you want to add to the list?" the goateed man demanded.  
  
"Broken horns," Kimahri rumbled.  
  
Rikku stared vaguely at her claw. "Religious prejudice."  
  
"Zombies and other undead," muttered Auron.  
  
"Conspiracies," Wakka put in.  
  
Tidus finally managed to find his tongue. "Annoying vague mystic-type people."  
  
Yuna followed suit with "Things that aren't real."  
  
The goateed man scribbled down the contributions of everyone but Yuna and shook his head. "I'm afraid that the whole subject of 'things that aren't real' might be difficult to avoid round here. How would you react if I told you that you were actually the seven main characters of a very popular video game?"  
  
Yuna and her cohorts stared blankly at him.  
  
"Believe it," the goateed man sighed. He added 'CAIT SITH' to the end of The List in very large capitals. And underlined it. Twice. "My name's Reeve. I don't know what you've done to deserve this, but I don't know what I did to deserve it either. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. 


End file.
